Abstract

In the agricultural countries of the Old World, farming ror several centuries has not significantly reduced the productive capacity of the land, because Nature-induced erosion was always kept under control, through conservation farming, as opposed to exploitative farming which is the primary cause of man-induced erosion In the words of Sir Daniel Hall, "the methods practised by the pioneers in the development of a new coun- try are rarely those of sound agriculture....". To capture the international trade in agricultural commodities, all opportunities, as they arose in the last World War, were harnessed and soil fertility was bartered away for the precious metal, as so much produce exported is so much soil fertility driven out of the land. Deforestation, to meet the needs of wood for fuel, cellulose, explosives, newspaper, books, rayon, match sticks, paints, varnishes &c. and to bring more land under the plough, for agricultural produce, brought in its wake, floods, erosion and the desert. Forty million acres were worked in this way, in the USA. (Africa is no better) and were abandoned during the World Economic Depression, from the erosion that resulted through faulty land utilisation, mainly mono-culture Wild floods are unknown in areas not tampered by man. The cities, railways, roads, hydro-electricity, water supply schemes, irrigation and navigation projects, all secured through forced production converted to astronomical bank balances, are shaken in their very foundations, by erosion induced by man, through deforestation and floods. To quote Jacks and Whyte, more soil was lost from the world between 1914 and 1934 than in the whole of previous human history." The combined effects of boom, slump and drought produced a catastrophic biological and physical deterioration of whole regions, culminating in dust storms and floods which threatened to become fixed events in the calendar of North America.

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